3 people called her 'best friend'

But what friends and family remember most are the compassion, generosity and optimism that carried her through her last days as she battled bone cancer.

"Three people said, 'She's my best friend,' " recalled sister-in-law Denise Kuiper of Orlando. That was the kind of person she was. Everybody was special to her. If you were in a conversation with her, she made you aware that you were her focus . . . you were important."

Kuiper of Lake Mary died Friday at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando. She was 52.

After spending her early adulthood in Connecticut, where she earned a bachelor's degree in art from the University of Hartford, Kuiper moved to Central Florida for a fresh start after a divorce. She became a teacher at Orlando's Cherokee School, where she taught severely emotionally disturbed children. There, she met her future husband, Derrick Kuiper, who was a school volunteer.

Although Derrick Kuiper was a decade younger, he was quickly drawn to her warmth, compassion, forgiveness and upbeat personality.

Dina Kuiper was devoted to daughter, Allyson Atwood, 20, and son Joshua Kuiper, 13, whom she helped nightly with homework. Both loved science.

"They were study buddies," Derrick Kuiper said.

Through the years, Dina Kuiper served as a docent and tour guide at the Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens, taught religion classes at two Catholic churches and volunteered at special events and as a sports coach at Lake Mary Preparatory School, where her children attended.

When a walkway ceiling collapsed in 1999 at St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Altamonte Springs, Kuiper brought weekly meals to a stranger hurt in the accident who lived nearby, Derrick Kuiper said. When charities needed food, clothes, toys or furniture, Dina Kuiper was among the first to step up.

"She was an absolutely wonderful person," Kuiper said.

One of Dina Kuiper's passions was art. Her home is filled with pottery, painting and wood burnings. Some of her work, including a large piece with 1,001 origami cranes -- a Japanese symbol of good luck -- will be on display at her memorial service. Her family plans to scatter her ashes in a coral reef in a biodegradable urn so she can merge with and return to the nature she so loved.